What are you playing now: The New Thread

[Mamoulian War]

Aaaand Celestian Tales: Old North – Howl of the Ravager, DLC prequel to the original game, is finished. The gameplay is the same, but you play as one of the young lords of Old North, introduced in the base game. It's little bit shorter, but last two areas were for me tedious, which little bit worsened my impressions.

The next one will be either another run of Tales of Symphonia (I want to get the crazy Gung Ho! title for Lloyd) or finally Pillars of Eternity. Or something completely different, maybe another Paradox game... I don't know My backlog is thankfully little bit stale at the moment, stopped to grow, but sometimes I am to indecisive to pick what to play next *rolls eyes* .

[the_dog_days]

10 hours ago, Tale said:

A bit of Destiny 2, just enough to get the season title. Looks like this season was kind of meh and now it's essentially over. I might log back in to do dailies and weeklies so I can get the rest of the Empyrean Cartographer set, but don't expect to really play more of it. Dawn better sound incredible or I won't even come back for that.

A bit of Destiny 1, still struggling to do the 220-280 grind. My lowest level item is still gloves and I'm holding on upgrading anything until I get that. Can't do strikes since nobody is playing the level 36 versions. Just have to grind Court of Oryx solo, I guess. I did get Husk of the Pit. That's the good news.

And I just started The Outer Worlds. My god the environments are gorgeous. Who is responsible for this?

Since no one else spoke up, I'll take credit.

[melkathi]

Narcos, the negatives:

No free mode on the map. You do some random side missions, and after two of those the next story mission unlocks. With nine story missions marked on the map, the DEO campaign looks to be twenty seven missions - more if you farm extra side missions.

 

Resting is an issue. If the objective is to secure evidence, I can simply not pick it up and heal to full before completing the mission. Hopefully that will not be the case with later missions. Also, it creates a lul in the fighting, when both sides just sit behind cover, resting. And it puts strain on the AI, who needs to prioritize between resting behind cover and getting farther away from the grenade launcher that can damage them even behind full cover.

 

Can't change equipment. A policeman will always carry a pistol. A Sec Bloc will always have an SMG, a pistol and bullet proof vest. They can gain new skills when leveling up, but the game is designed that you fire and hire. I will have to check again, but I am under the impression that characters you train up manually, will have more skills than the ones you hire at high levels.

I don't see the problem some people complain about, that they only activate one unit and ignore the rest. I believe they didn't really get past the intro.

Edited November 21, 2019 by melkathi

[Keyrock]

I did the big Kaer Morhen battle in TW3, so I'm into the late stages of the game now. I plan to make Ciri Empress, so, if I remember correctly, that means Radovid has to die (fine by me), Nilfgaard has to win the war (I'm torn on this but it's probably the best outcome, all things considered), and Roche has to win his conflict with Dijkstra (fine by me). I'm staying true to Yennefer... in the main game anyway. Once I get to the expansions, I'm kicking Yen to the curb and hooking up with my favorite red headed medic. #TeamShani

[GhostofAnakin]

Playing Death Stranding.  Still utterly confused, but I'm not sure if that's just because I'm early in or because Kojima.

[ComradeYellow]

On 11/20/2019 at 10:03 AM, Tale said:

And I just started The Outer Worlds. My god the environments are gorgeous. Who is responsible for this?

Daniel Alpbert is the lead art designer

https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/02/20/the-story-behind-the-outer-worlds-amazing-art

And yes, art design is just one of the many stellar aspects of TOW, and I find it hilarious that some people are rating it "good but not great", when in fact it is one of the best RPG's to date.

[Starwars]

IN FACT, it is not.

In all seriousness, it's one of my least favorite Obsidian RPG releases. I was very disappointed with it overall. Though I must say, while I didn't like the look of the visuals prior to the release, I really ended up liking how the game looked. I did not expect it to come together as well as it did.

I just finished up a replay of Dragon Age Origins. Always kind of liked the game, and had been a while since I played it. It was kinda like I remembered it I guess. What I like about it is that it feels pretty substantial, especially given how it was a brand new IP. The world feels fleshed out, there's a fair amount of reactivity, you have the Origins, the dialogues are actually better than I remember. Some great choices here and there. It's a pretty impressive effort.

Of course, on the other hand, you have a lot of really bad fetch quests and combat which is... maybe not horrible on its own but at times the sheer amount of just completely bogs the game down. Orzammar and the Deep Roads are probably my favorite location in the game when it comes to setting and lore but oh my god is there a lot of combat. It kind of saps my will to play the longer the game goes on, which is also how I remember it.

Still, a good game and it's a shame what they did to the franchise. Oh well.

[ComradeYellow]

"TOW is one of the worst Obsidian games" followed by "I just replayed DA:O" explains a lot.

[melkathi]

Don't put words in his mouth - you are not doing yourself any favours.

Starwars said his least favourite. He did not say worst. Big difference.

 

[Chilloutman]

so I finally got my new PC up and running..

 

So I decided to finally play Witcher 3 and since I thought it would be fun I run on second highest difficulty and oh boi I am not enjoying it at all. I was prepared for tough fights but there is so much filler enemies I think I will have to lower it down. Really not fun of that combat system. replaying fights with bunch of wolfs for 2-3 times everywhere is really not my cup of tea. After playing Kingdom Come I really can't take so much enemies everywhere. I can't believe there is any village alive in this world...

 

I also want to finish my run of PoE2 but I am at boss fight in Eye of Wael and I am getting my ass kicked extra hard. I should have probably prepared more before I get into that location I didn't realised it will be that tough. I can barely get it down to half hp before I get rekt. There is so much enemies and AoE spam and at same time getting mind controlled or petrified... seriously no idea how to deal with it

[UrbaNebula]

I just picked up a 60+ hour Divinity Original Sin 2 playthrough with my friend after he spent three months away in Japan. We had no memory of the world changing event we had apparently JUST put into effect and couldn't remember any of our abilities or character traits.

It was largely hilarious.

[Keyrock]

15 hours ago, Chilloutman said:

so I finally got my new PC up and running..

 

So I decided to finally play Witcher 3 and since I thought it would be fun I run on second highest difficulty and oh boi I am not enjoying it at all. I was prepared for tough fights but there is so much filler enemies I think I will have to lower it down. Really not fun of that combat system. replaying fights with bunch of wolfs for 2-3 times everywhere is really not my cup of tea. After playing Kingdom Come I really can't take so much enemies everywhere. I can't believe there is any village alive in this world...

Igni is pretty efficient at barbecuing wolves. If you're on horseback, you can just ride past the wolves and ignore them. Even on foot you can run past them once you have halfway decent stamina. They'll stop chasing you eventually. Same goes for drowners.

You don't have to kill every random monster,  you'll lose your mind if you try to.

[Chilloutman]

26 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Igni is pretty efficient at barbecuing wolves. If you're on horseback, you can just ride past the wolves and ignore them. Even on foot you can run past them once you have halfway decent stamina. They'll stop chasing you eventually. Same goes for drowners.

You don't have to kill every random monster,  you'll lose your mind if you try to.

Ok thanks will keep that in mind. Another pet peeve I got is that damn compass, whoever thought that compass should not point to north was sadistic bastard...

[ComradeYellow]

I found TW3 to be piss easy on Death March, but then again I "cheated" and put all of my points in Alchemy and maybe a few in Signs like Axii and Quen.  Red skills are for nubs.

Edited November 22, 2019 by ComradeMaster

[Malcador]

Aard is fun with the chilling effect.  Finished Hearts of Stone, let Gaunter eat Olgierd's soul and told him to **** off with his offers.  On to Blood and Wine which I enjoyed a lot more.  Is nice not having it rain every damn moment of the game.

[Hurlshort]

I've got a really bad case of the Battle Brothers bug. This game has me hooked badly. I just started my second company. My rookie campaign went pretty well, I helped a house win a war of nobles, but I had lost almost all of my original warriors over the campaign. They all died honorably, except for that one guy that tried to run from the Yeti-like creatures. In his defense, his broken arm never healed right, and he struggled to hold his shield properly. I decided to end the campaign after the war and give another scenario a try. 

[ComradeYellow]

Returning to Resi7.  Don't really like the plot for this one, or the characters besides Jack (Mia is especially annoying), but the gameplay is sound.  I still have not beat it on Madhouse, which I actually had to rage quit first time around because I absolutely could not get past Jack 3.0 when you battle him in the boathouse, tried literally 30 times or so.

[GhostofAnakin]

Does Death Stranding get better?  So far, the game has me walking for minutes a time with nothing really happening, carrying a bunch of packages that causes me to constantly stumble, and running away from weird creatures I don't know how to avoid.

So far, it's like Kojima heard all the complaints gamers had about fetch quests and decided he was going to create an entire game that's one big fetch quest.

[Hawke64]

28 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Aard is fun with the chilling effect.  Finished Hearts of Stone, let Gaunter eat Olgierd's soul and told him to **** off with his offers.  On to Blood and Wine which I enjoyed a lot more.  Is nice not having it rain every damn moment of the game.

I remember my disappointment, when the game did not allow me to kill the redhead guy with mustache after defeating the bald guy. But the saber he gave me, Iris, was quite nice.

Spoiler

A piece of equipment was more memorable and important for me, than two characters.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. I've reached the Dragon Shrine. It changed a lot in SotFS - the dragon knights are friendly. It makes the area somehow unique, as everywhere else, except Majula, everything tries to murder me.
I finished Lucatiel's quest line and it was a good reminder about DSII main plot's driving force - to preserve one's identity, memories, self. Still, it's a really tragic story.

Spoiler

 

 

[Keyrock]

I'm almost at the end of the TW3 main campaign. I'm lev 34 with a full masterwork griffin set, though I'm 1 greater veles rune and a few greater yrden runes short of being fully maxed out. I like the look of the wolf set better, but the grifin set has awesome set bonuses for a yrden-centric build, such as the build I'm running. That does nothing for me now, but it will pay off in Blood & Wine.

[213374U]

On 11/22/2019 at 2:56 PM, UrbaNebula said:

I just picked up a 60+ hour Divinity Original Sin 2 playthrough with my friend after he spent three months away in Japan. We had no memory of the world changing event we had apparently JUST put into effect and couldn't remember any of our abilities or character traits.

It was largely hilarious.

I've had this happen too after picking up semi-abandoned campaigns. DOS was one of them, but also Stellaris and others. It's one of the few downsides of playing co-op in games that have such long campaigns.

Good to know it's not just MY brain turning to mush.

[Malcador]

Was wondering why the hell my Tropico 6 mission was not proceeding...turns out the annoying request from the Broker I ignore routinely was part of the main questline, hah.  Those requests are annoying as hell with the same voice lines used over and over and over.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm still lost as hell in Death Stranding.  So far, I'm not sure how fun this is going to be for me.  I'm literally just running over a barren map between cutscenes at the various settlements.

[Hurlshort]

Battle Brothers is great at making you think about what an acceptable loss is. I mean, you are going to lose some brothers. Sure, you could reload and try to redo the whole battle, but are you really that attached to Gunther the Gambler? He had a pretty good run before he got that arrow to the throat, and some of your other guys were pretty stellar in the fight, and it would be a shame to wipe that out. You can recruit a new guy in the next town.

[Hawke64]

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. Defeated Aldia, the Scholar of the First Sin on the first try, though I did return to the bonfire right after Nashandra to restock and change equipment. Now I'm going for the Darklurker and the Fume Knight, not sure about the other two DLC. It is a bit ironic that I use the same falchion I started with (it was the first thing I bought). The Chaos Blade would be ideal for a dex build, but it causes too much HP damage per hit and its moveset is somehow worse, than falchion's, as I can't strike repeatedly - there's a delay after 2 hits.